Saturday, December 13, 2008

Functional Atheists in your Christian Union

"I had a very interesting meeting with some university students at a good-ranking institution little while ago. We talked about whether they approach their study with Christian assumptions. I wanted to know whether they often considered what God thinks about what they were studying.

What came out (student workers take note) was that most of them clearly believed core Christian truths and approached life with a Christian worldview but couldn't explain why they believed what they believed. In fact they didn't come close to being able to do so. And hence they had no sense that what they believed was true for all. It was in the realm of personal private opinion or preference. Most couldn't see that believing in salvation in Jesus alone implicitly means that the worldview of their non-Christian friends is incorrect.

They too were functional atheists. In this case they enjoyed worship meetings and all the paraphernalia that goes with having a close Christian community. But they were resting very lightly upon the world around them because they simply couldn't see that what they believed was any more pertinent to life or their study than what anyone else believed. They were Christian relativists. Their Christianity amounted to having a comfortable club that insulated them from the world."